The old saying goes “find something you love and
you’ll never work another day in your life.”
John Styles, P.Eng., FEC puts in long hours at Outlaw Trails Spirits Distillery, but he doesn’t describe what he does as work.
“As an engineer, I just geek out over all of this stuff. The machinery, the chemistry, the precision process – I find it endlessly fascinating.”
When one visits the distillery, located in Regina’s warehouse district, the tasting samples are almost a distraction. Styles’s passion and enthusiasm for his business are more intoxicating than the products he sells.
Today the distillery makes over 14 products – with more to come – and has won international awards. But it all started with a family vacation.
From Inlaws to Outlaws
Styles previously worked in the petroleum sector and is still active on many company boards. When he sold his company in 2009, he and his wife Charmaine started to look at options for semi-retirement businesses they could both enjoy.
“We looked at dozens of franchises and other types of businesses but couldn’t find anything that was the right fit and would suit both of our interests,” Styles says.
But destiny finally came calling in 2011 when the Styleses paid a visit to John’s brother-in-law in Butte, Montana.
“One day he sent us on a tour to a place he thought was a craft brewery. I think he just wanted to get us out of the house for a while. It turned out to be a craft distillery. The minute I walked in, I was like a raccoon – I was attracted by all the shiny stuff. My engineer’s mind started to go into overdrive.”
The idea of starting their own craft distillery would allow John to combine his experience with chemistry and refining with his wife’s love of wine making. There were still some significant gaps in their knowledge, which they filled through training courses and trial and error.
“Sometimes error gets the best of me but that’s what applied science is all about – learning from mistakes.”
Flowing from their visit to Butte, the Styleses named their new business in honour of the Outlaw Trail, a legendary network of secret caves and hidden horse trails stretching from southern Saskatchewan to Mexico. The trail had been used by many of the most notorious outlaws from the Wild West through to the Prohibition eras.
“My wife’s grandfather was the Montana territory’s first brand inspector, responsible for catching cattle rustlers. We’ve carried that heritage through to our products which all have Old West names, labels and bottle designs.”
The name is also a nod to Saskatchewan’s infamous history from the Prohibition era.
“It’s interesting that Saskatchewan was so late to the game with craft distilling because, when you think about it, this is where Canada’s independent distilling industry started – with Al Capone and the rum runners of the 1920s.”
The Name Game
Have you ever noticed that certain sugary cereals are described as “chocolatey”, “choco” or “cocoa” flavoured? That’s because government food regulations prohibit the use of the word “chocolate” unless the product reaches certain standards of cocoa content. Styles’s products face a similar challenge.
“One of the most daunting parts of starting a craft distillery – or any business, really – is the sheer amount of government regulation you have to get through. Saskatchewan Liquor and Gaming, the city, the fire marshall, the health authorities, the Canada Food Inspection Agency and many others all want their turn to peek under the hood.”
Food and liquor regulations require many alcoholic products to be aged a certain amount of time (three years for whisky, a year for rum) before they can be marketed with their common names. Using artificial aging and flavouring techniques, Styles can produce beverages that are indistinguishable from their namesakes, but he still cannot use the actual name. His shop is therefore coincidentally (considering his name) full of “styles” – rum-style molasses beverage, whisky-style grain beverage and so forth.
“Scotch is the worst as it is an internationally protected trademark, like champagne. If it’s not from Scotland, the furthest you can go without incurring a lawsuit is ‘single-malt beverage’.”v
The one exception, Styles says, is vodka which has no minimum aging time. The only regulatory restriction is that it be flavourless, containing no suggestion of the taste of the original food source.
It all starts with beer
When most of us think of the craft distilling process, we probably think of a moonshiner’s copper kettle still. Styles has a couple of devices that look like those old-time stills but on steroids – tall steel and copper tanks that refine the raw product into high-grade alcohol. But the process starts at a level familiar to any home brewer.
“Every alcoholic beverage basically starts with a beer but it’s a special kind of beer. Whereas a brewer will put in hops to give the beer a more savoury flavour, distillers beer is sweet to account for the concentration of flavour in the distilling stage. If you put a conventional beer through the distilling process, the bitter flavour would become super-concentrated, which would ruin it.”
Distilling requires an enormous quantity of this raw material. Styles estimates that 400 litres of distillers beer would produce at best 28 bottles or about 21 litres.
The distilling process requires three key pieces of equipment. The masher combines grain and water to create mash. The mash goes into huge steel fermenting vats (Styles owns three) where mash, yeast and water create the distilling beer. This is then piped to the stills. Outlaw Trails has one still for brown liquor and a second (with several more distilling rings) for vodka.
Straight from the still, the distilled liquor is almost pure alcohol. To get it to legal alcohol levels, modern distillers use the simple method of Prohibition speakeasies: they water it down. However, in an industrial setting, this process must be very precise to ensure consistency.
After the alcohol level is adjusted, the liquor is poured into tubs for aging and flavouring. While traditional distilleries use oak casks for this stage, Styles uses plastic tubs but uses a trick he picked up from the wine industry.
“Wine is also traditionally aged in oak casks. There was a time when there was a world shortage of casks right at the time the Napa Valley wine industry was coming into its own. To get around the shortage, the winemakers inserted oak rods into steel cases. In theory, the wine absorbs even more of the oak flavour than through traditional methods because more of the wine was exposed to the wood at any one time.”
Styles also uses what he calls “tea bags” of fruit, spices and other ingredients to infuse flavours into vodka, liqueurs and spiced rums. But Styles’s real secret ingredient is a surprising one: local water.
“The water in the Saskatchewan river system couldn’t be better for the craft distilling process. It helps us emulate a wide range of products. That, combined with the quality of local grain products, gives us a real edge.”
Constant Research
The Styleses are constantly on the lookout for new ways to improve their products, which takes them to craft distilling conferences across North America.
“We absorb a lot of information from people who have done minute research into oaking, casking, playing with yeasts and temperature, all sorts of ways of creating a superior tasting product without having to wait 15-20 years. I love it – all the experimentation brings out the mad scientist in me.”
It was at one of these conferences where Outlaw Trails won a bronze medal and a best in category for international spirits for one of their whiskeys.
“It was a huge boost for us, having only been in business for a year at the time.”
Serial Entrepeneur
While the distillery business is Styles’s latest entrepreneurial venture, it isn’t his first.
“Although I worked as an employee for companies large and small at the start of my career, I eventually moved on to a series of start-up ventures. I was one of the people Steve Halabura brought into a little potash exploration project called Potash One that eventually was bought out by K+S and became the Legacy mine. That experience continues with other ventures I’m involved in with the oil and gas and municipal water sectors. So I’ve had entrepreneurial experience throughout much of my career. The whole process of putting together a business at this point is natural as breathing for me.”
“I call myself a serial entrepreneur – find it, grow it, sell it – except probably this one. I’ve got too much passion invested with Outlaw Trails. I may die under a still at age 95.”
Be an engineer first
For other engineers thinking of starting a second career as an entrepreneur, Styles has some simple advice: be an engineer first.
“What are the attributes that lead to a successful business? Due diligence. Research the hell out of a product before implementing. It’s important to thoroughly understand the product before you invest capital. Engineers are innovators and problem solvers. To every beaver, everything looks like a tree. To every engineer, everything looks like a puzzle, which is a good approach to establish a successful business. Engineers are also tenacious, which is probably the entrepreneur’s greatest asset when you’re trying to push the product over the finish line.”
“It also doesn’t hurt to have a few extra dollars hanging around because new ventures can blow through money like water.”